cleaning out the closet on StumbleUpon

I have recently heard news about StumbleUpon banning several accounts because the users submitted comercial content. Here is the message these unfortunate stumblers usually received:

Regrettably, your account privileges have been suspended due to a breach of our TOS. I respectfully draw your attention to our Terms, particularly with respect to the clauses which forbid the use of personal accounts for the promotion of a business, product or service, and also with regard to the sending of ’spam’ messages to other members.

Our terms can be found here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/terms.html

Under the circumstances, the restriction is unlikely to be lifted.

Was it a surprise? For many yes, but if you take a look at their TOS, you’ll see these actions are strictly frowned upon. StumbleUpon is not for selling things, not for promoting an affiliate program, not for blatant product reviews, with a buy link.
Consequently, some of the people that befriended these “commercial accounts” can have some kind of flag raised.

So here are a few steps for cleaning your closet on StumbleUpon one of my friends, kukon,  let me in on:

• Take a look at the people you are mutual friends with. Click on the username without any avatar. Usually, when an account is under review, the display image or avatar is not displayed in the SU network. Remove that user from your friend list and the page will change to an empty one, if it’s the case, saying the account is reviewed.
• See what your friends are submitting or stumbling upon. Constantly submitting or thumbing up articles from certain domains can damage your account.
• Be an active user for the community. Try to submit things that are interesting to others, that have the potential to turn popular. Contribute and make yourself known to other stumblers!

Recently, StumbleUpon has also been banning websites that offered stumble exchanges. Here is an excerpt confirming it:
Are incentive programs allowed? Someone asked me to rate their web-site?

StumbleUpon does not allow personal accounts to be used for the purposes of incentivization or promoting sites. This would be considered a breach of our Terms.

The practice of sending PM’s encouraging or inviting other stumblers to rate/review sites in exchange for reciprocal reviews/ratings, monetary, or any other form of reward is strictly forbidden.

The practice of actively soliciting a rating or review for a site is also forbidden. Should you receive a PM, or encounter forum postings that breach this rule, you are encouraged to report this via feedback.
Accounts participating in such practices will be deleted and banned, and the related sites deleted and banned from the system.

Link Building

A great post I came across last week was Neyne’s post about unconventional link attributes. He discusses the temporal element of link value and illustrates this with the results of an experiment he performed. Although it’s (like Neyne states as well) not a sterile experimenting environment, the graphs are pretty interesting to see.

Another great post is Derek Edmond’s recap of Eric Enge’s link session at the SEO meetup in Arlington last week.This post offers a few great tips that you can use to improve your link profile, such as 6 tips to personalize your link request.

And also:

• David F. listed .
• Eric Ward asks himself (and others) if linking experts should go underground.
• Tim Nash dives into link bombing and Google bombing.
• Chris G provides some excellent tips on how to get more bookmarks and better links.
• Have you ever wondered how you can measure the result of a linkbaiting campaign? Use these 5 metrics provided by Chris Winfield.
• David Wallace explains how you can check if a directory listing will have any value.
• Li Evans asks if Google can FINALLY come up with something official about nofollow.
• Building links for a B2B site? Justilien has some great tips.
• Michael Martinez talks about linking theory axioms.
• Aaron Wall shows how you can determine the effectiveness of your internal link structure.
• And the last one is Eric Enge’s interview with Adam Lasnik (which is mainly about links).

Frustrated by search?

Irritated with irrelevant results?

There maybe a better albeit still imperfect way. Metasearch.

Metasearch engines combines the results from multiple search engines in order to give searchers a better look at result sets.

Searching for a term on any of the big three search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) will yield results that are different. There may or may not be some overlap. A metasearch engine aggregates the results from all three (and sometimes others) and attempts to provide a better list of relevant results. The goal of any search engine is to provide answers to a searcher’s questions. The metasearch engine has the advantage of pulling those “answers” from multiple sources. In the process of combining results, the better metasearch engines will eliminate duplicates. The best ones will allow users to view the results in comparison mode. A column is displayed for the results from the metasearch engine, then a column from Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. By giving searchers not only their own aggregated results, but also the comparison results, meta engines provide a far greater ability to find answers to questions.

Metasearch engines should be called a Searcher’s Search Engine because they are geared towards helping the searcher. There is another kind of search engine called the Marketer’s Search Engine which I discuss in a separate article. These kind of search engines, while still helpful to searchers, are more heavily helpful to marketers.

Remember, the goal is to find answers to questions. Having the ability to see all the relevant data, instead of one slice of the data, will help users find the answer(s) much more quickly.

There are two metasearch engines that I would recommend.

Dogpile is probably the most well known of the metasearch engines. Myriad Search is little known tool used mainly by a small niche of people. However, both are helpful in seeing aggregated and comparison results.

Reasons to use metasearch:

*find answers to questions from a broader base of results
*find better results
*make searching easier
*understand the big three search engines
*compare the big three search engines
*use big three analysis to improve SEO

Saul Flower writes and maintains Recommended Web Tools, an online resource for web development beginners.

Tags: search, search+engines, google+search, web+tools, metasearch

Thoughts on Google PageRank

There has been quite some debate in certain circles of the blogosphere with respect to what has been happening with Google’s PageRank (PR). Some websites have experienced a significant drop in PR, some claim that bloggers who make earnings through paid postings have been penalised, some even think that Google, as a monopolist, is censoring a segment of the Internet. One cannot deny that the PR values for a number of websites have changed, but people must also realise what PageRank really is.

For those unfamiliar with the term, PageRank is the heart of a trademarked algorithm that Google uses to power it’s search engine. It’s a link analysis algorithm that is based around gauging the “importance” of a web page by how many other web pages link to it. Not only does it take into account how many pages link to the page in question, but also, their own rank and the number and relevance of pages that link to them. A few years ago, Google made the decision to expose this Page Rank figure to webmasters and users around the web, probably to help them optimise their sites and understand their placing in their index. And this is what is the cause of the problem today.

See, a whole industry has been spawned around PR. If you search for the term in Google, you will find hundreds of websites and companies claiming to be Search Engine Optimisation experts who can help you increase your Page Rank. Not only this, but in the absence of any decent metrics for site comparison, Page Rank has become the cornerstone of all “paid blogging” efforts and people selling space on their website.

And this is a problem. In a pure sense, the PR of a website is no indication of the quality of a website. PR can be manipulated, PR can be bought and sold and website owners, particularly bloggers run the danger of forgetting that what really draws people to the website is the quality of the content there. PR is no measure of “value” that a website brings to the Internet, it’s simply Google’s internal metric which it uses to tailor it’s search results.

I especially find it interesting that people claim that Google is “censoring” the Internet, that it is being “anti-competitive” and that it’s ruining their websites. Page Rank is a comparative index and most of all, the index actually belongs to Google. Your PR may have changed, but does it mean you can no longer find your site when you search for it in Google? Has it actually changed the number of page hits your site gets? Does it make your content less relevant?

My advice to everyone out there is this: Stop worrying about your PR and focus on producing some real, genuine, valuable content. This is what brings people to your website and gets them to come back again. If Google decided to set everybody’s PR to 0, or to stop publishing it altogether (it’s certainly their prerogative to do this), what would this really mean to you, your business and the people who visit your website? Focus on your content, whatever Google does to Page Rank, the market will adjust.

Tags: pagerank, PR, page+rank, links, text+links, google+ranks

ZeroRank - More PageRank Carnage (Round 5)

I have been receiving emails and comments today about yet another PageRank downturn for multiple sites.

Andrew Ooi has compiled a short list of Malaysian sites, many were as much as a PR5 previously, and currently show a PageRank of zero (a white bar)

Examples include:-

Colleen’s Simple Kind of Life and 5xmom

The numbers seem to be stable across multiple data centers

There doesn’t seen to be any change in prominent Search Marketing sites such as Search Engine Round Table and Search Engine Journal, and other popular bloggers such as Emom and Yaro still seem to have their degraded but still “head above water” rankings.

Meanwhile Matt Cutts is playing around with $200 PCs and the negative views of the blogosphere regarding Google.

Meaning Of PageRank Unchanged

Google have had more than a month to change the description of PageRank on their website.

I haven’t seen any change to Search Engine Rankings and there is still no way to request reconsideration without admitting guilt.

The Webmaster Help Center also doesn’t give an option to report that you think Google is making a mistake in their manual evaluation.

How do I request reconsideration of my site?

If your site has previously violated our webmaster guidelines, and you’ve made changes to it so that it now meets our guidelines, you can ask Google to reconsider your site for inclusion in the index.

In addition, if you recently purchased a domain that you think may have violated our guidelines before you owned it, you can use the reconsideration request form to let us know that you recently acquired the site and that it now adheres to the guidelines.

To request reconsideration of your site:

1. Sign in to Google webmaster tools. The webmaster tools Dashboard opens.
2. Under Tools, click Request reconsideration and follow the steps.

Google do now call this reconsideration, not just reinclusion, and Matt notes that you can still be in the index even though you have a penalty, which he updated November 4th 2007

I did find something cool though which I hadn’t seen before, maybe I missed it being reported, or didn’t pay much notice.

I am still being crawled frequently and there are some interesting spikes. It is a pity that the graph doesn’t line up with the scale.

From January people using PayPerPost will be able to use SocialSpark.

SocialSpark Alpha screenshots do still have PageRank listed, and that will likely be removed totally unless Google change their stance.

I still don’t sell PageRank, but traffic hasn’t changed, if anything it has increased as I write more content that people want to read and link to, and it even brings in some search traffic.

Google is making huge mistakes with these updates. I know many people receiving penalties sell links, and I am not trying to defend them.

When you get someone like regular reader Rob, a real expert in SEO, who based on the links he receives should be a comfortable PR4, or possibly a PR5, currently a PR0, because he wrote one paid review using nofollow on the links.

Then you get affiliate marketers like Vlad who may have written a couple of high quality reviews, and sold some advertising.
At the same time he also is an affiliate with some affiliate services which offer SEO friendly “clean links” for their merchants.
For a website owner they are still links from which they will be making money, though the money from affiliate marketing is variable - the links still affect search engines, as do many other affiliate links which feature 301 redirects.

Now whilst Aaron’s issues might be appeased as a result of the recent interchange with Matt, that is really just the tip of the iceberg. Aaron hasn’t been lynched.

To finish I am just going to steal the words of Michael VanDeMar which he posted as a comment on Matt’s Reporting On Paid Links post.

Honestly, Matt… and if your legal team won’t let you answer this, then I understand, but if you are allowed to answer then I (and I’m sure others) would really, really like to know… as the G algo stands now, exactly how much off balance would you say it is due to the insidious act of buying and selling text link ads? How many man hours have you spent combating this crime against humanity, and at what cost? And is it seriously skewing the results that much, that all the efforts spent on it were, and continue to be, justified? Is the algo that fragile?

The other main reason that I disagree with this idea is that you think (or appear to be implying, anyways) that Paid Link === No Human Review. This not the case 9 times out of 10. You should know that.

Update - Official Statement From Izea (PayPerPost)

An official statement finally from Izea (PayPerPost) on their blog regarding Google PageRank Updates.

We now know from some of our friends inside of Google (thanks “bob”) that they are now looking for phrases such as PPP, PayPerPost,ReviewMe, Payu2blog, etc. in the text of your post. For that reason I would suggest refraining from using any type of this text in the body of your posts, sponsored or not. When you disclose thank the sponsor, not PPP.

I would like to thank Ted (CEO of Izea) for having the courage to say something about this in public, something it seems Google so far have not managed to do, and rarely do so on an official company blog.

Lisa Stewart of Bigfoot Web Marketing also has an excellent writeup of the decision process on the PayPerPost boards that ultimately led to Ted Murphy making a statement.

How to Make Money off of Accidental Rankings

Since Google largely tends to favor ranking informational websites over commercial websites, some authoritative blogs tend to rank for valuable queries based on posts they make in passing.

Even if you had no intent to monetize a post, it just became easier to monetize accidental rankings. If you use analytics to track your stats and notice that you start ranking for some good keywords you can use Triggit to embed links to merchant products directly in the text of your blog post.

Shoemoney created this quick video to show how Triggit works

Unlike the automated ad solutions like intellitxt or AdSense, these Triggit ads

• look like other regular links on the page (so they should get a high CTR)
• can easily be applied on a page by page level (so you do not have to clutter up every page to monetize the few pages that can make a lot of money)
• link to products recommended by the editor (to preserve editorial integrity)
• can link to merchants that pay via affiliate payout or CPC (offering multiple monetization models)
• allow you to keep your pages clean (and easy to link at) until they rank, then have you add monetization after you have a leading market position for related keywords

Triggit ads are easy to set up and should require little maintenance on the end user’s side, but they are still a small start up, so if you start doing well with them make sure you remember which pages do well so you can keep monetizing the pages if the Triggit partnership stops working, and so you can track which pages you should try to monetize more aggressively and/or build links to.

As blended semi-editorial in content ad networks like these evolve, the distinction between optimization and spam blurs. And since Google has a similar product, it is going to be hard to view this in a negative light without looking hypocritical in the process. From Google’s pay per action page:

Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.

For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: “Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today.” (Mousing over the link will display “Ads by Google” to identify these as pay-per-action ads).

Though the maximum length of a text link is 90 characters, we’ve found that shorter links perform better because they allow the publisher use the link in more places on her/his site and in different context. The maximum length is 90 characters but less than 5 words is best. Even better, just use your brand name to offer maximum flexibility to the publisher.

Our Friends:
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Google vs Text Link Ads

By WebGrafix

Google has reached a monopolistic milestone with its recent changes to the treatment of paid links. While I believe they are still operating within reason, they are edging ever closer to the danger zone, after which I will not be surprised to see regulatory intervention.

Recent changes to Google’s index have been focused around the treatment of paid links. Since Google’s PageRank algorithm relies on the quality and quantity of links between sites, paid links can potentially skew the index. In an effort to reduce the effect of paid links on their index, Google has recommended that webmasters either use “rel=nofollow” for these links, or not have paid links at all. As for enforcing these rules, Google has recently begun punishing sites by manually reducing the PageRank for sites involved in the buying and selling of links, most notably Text Link Ads.

Google and Text Link Ads have similar revenue streams; both companies make their money selling paid links. In Google’s case, these links are displayed on their own web site, which features a free and extremely popular search engine. Google also distributes these ads on other web sites, aka the Content Network, who’s site owners receive a percentage of the ad revenue from Google. Text Link Ads does not have content of their own for displaying advertising, but they do have the equivalent of their own Content Network, where advertisers can pick and choose web pages that they want their ads displayed on.

Google knows where and how it has placed advertising throughout the web, so they have no problem ignoring these ads when they crawl the Internet. But links placed through companies like Text Link Ads are more difficult for Google to discern, and can thereby affect how Google calculates PageRank for the sites involved. Google’s solution for this is the “rel=nofollow” attribute. Of course, one of the advantages of being an advertiser on Text Link Ads is that you may get the added benefit of PageRank juice. But now that Google is punishing paid linkers, customers of Text Link Ads are themselves at risk.

From one perspective, you have Google and Text Link Ads as direct competitors. Each sells advertising, in the form of text links, which are displayed throughout the web, and link back to the advertiser. But Google, with its majority share of search traffic, has begun punishing web site owners for being customers of Text Link Ads. If you want to use Text Link Ads, they tell us, you risk losing your place in our index. Considering the amount of referring traffic that Google is responsible for, most web sites can not afford this tradeoff.

From the other perspective, Text Links Ads just needs to add “rel=nofollow” to all the links they sell. Their advertisers still get their links, placed exactly where they want, and the resultant traffic. They no longer get any PageRank benefit, but it’s not really our place to tell Google how to run their search engine. There’s a reason they are #1.

Tags: text+link+ads, google, page+rank, link+bait, link+juice, text+link+ads